


gradients

by hyperphonic



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, ben solo is trying his best, even the supreme leader has wet dreams okay?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-21 19:17:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13747551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyperphonic/pseuds/hyperphonic
Summary: No, Rey of Jakku decidedly does not miss Leia Organa’s wayward son.(Except for the fact that she really, truly does).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: all i own is one (1) sick ass "casual sex friday" coffee mug

Rey wakes screaming.

 

Wakes with her heart in her chest and someone else’s horror in her throat. Wakes to the sight of Kylo Ren beside her in sleep clothes, disheveled, crying, and looking more like Ben Solo than she’s ever seen him before. Wild eyed, the Supreme Leader turns to her, opens his mouth as if to scream again, and then shuts it. Between them the Force draws tight, pulls their realities closer together, and Rey can feel the fear, feel the pain ( _horror as he watches his father slide backwards off of the lightsaber he gave him the tools to build_ ), feel the adrenaline furiously pumping through his veins as their chests rise and fall in a staccato together.

 

But most of all, she feels the crushing weight of regret, heavier than every planet in the galaxy combined.

 

Like the snap of Kylo’s lightsaber, the Force drops low, and Rey squints when the edges of his face go soft before vanishing all together as the bond closes with a _crack_ that hangs in the air long after her heart has slowed.

 

She falls asleep thinking of the unbridled pain in Kylo’s eyes, pupils blown wide in the near dark of his bedroom.

 

“I’ve seen your nightmares too,” he murmurs the next time they find themselves together: Rey, slick with engine coolant, up to her elbows in maintenance on the _Falcon_ , Kylo, shirtless save for what look to be compression sleeves up his forearms, clearly in the middle of training. She bristles for a second, lips halfway to hurling a defensive barb before she realizes he doesn’t mean it as a threat.

 

“I’m sorry you spent so long waiting on Jakku.” His eyes are earnest as he speaks, lightsaber hanging unlit from his limp hand.

 

“I am too,” she mumbles around the lump in her throat, blinking rapidly to keep the coolant dripping down her brow from her eyes.

 

“D’you dream about it every night?” She asks around a toothbrush one night before bed as they stand together in her ‘fresher. Kylo’s hand freezes halfway to his face, razor dripping water down his wrist. Rey feels his impulse to feign ignorance ring across the bond, but when he speaks he tells the truth.

 

“Nearly.”

 

Rey thinks that it explains why he’s looked so gaunt as of late. She studies the edge of her sink, unsure of what to say now that she has her answer, and Kylo returns to shaving (she pretends not to notice when he nicks his jaw).

 

 

The corrugated durasteel paneling typical of First Order spacecraft construction digs mercilessly into the soft skin of her shoulders and back. Rey pants hotly, fingers coming up to tangle in the thick, loosely curling hair of Kylo Ren. His lips are fire at her neck, pressing soft kisses and hot sweeps of his tongue in stark contrast to the cool bite of the metal at her back.

 

“Rey,” Kylo sighs her name, sucks a mark into the hollow at the base of her throat (his erection is prominent against her thigh, and Rey can hardly breathe with how badly she wants him).

 

She feels like she’s on fire, burning from the inside out as the man above her captures her lips in a kiss, and slowly begins to rock his hips. The friction is _good,_ sending Rey’s hands down from his hair to bite nails into the broad of his back (the same back that had shielded her in the Throne Room, Rey notes blearily). One large, calloused palm finds its way underneath her tunic, fingertips rubbing gentle circles into her left breast that do nothing to calm the inferno sparked by the steady movement of his hips.

 

“I-” Rey loses her voice in a gasp, every fiber of her being focused on the fingers suddenly hooked into the waistband of her pants.

 

“You?” Kylo rumbles above her, pulls back just enough to lay a heavy stare on the sight of his hand dipping into the sand colored fabric at her hips.

 

Whatever she was going to say is lost as his fingers slide low, part her lips and trace a line of fire up her core. Ben Solo is back in his eyes, wild from her wet on his fingers and more open than her legs beneath his palm. Their bond rings with the force of his desire, and Rey cannot help but thrill at the devotion that underscores the entire thing; he is _hers_ ( _and she is his_ ).

 

The Supreme Leader dips his head to ghost a kiss over her ear, and Rey thinks she might melt right into the durasteel behind her when he husks,

 

“May I?”

 

Rey wakes with a start, and the distinct impression of Kylo doing the same from parsecs and parsecs away. Her chest is heaving, slick with sweat beneath the light fabric of her sleep shirt, nipples hard despite the relative warmth of her bunk, and an unmistakable heat between her legs.

 

“Kriff.” She swears, one shaky hand going up to push her hair back (tangled in his First Order issued sheets, Kylo does the same, eyes wide as he stares down at the tent in his loose sleeping pants).

 

The Force doesn’t connect them for nearly a week after their shared dream.

 

Rey falls into her usual pattern: eat, work on the _Falcon,_ spar with whoever is available, attempt to fix her broken lightsaber, eat, sleep. She tries to tell herself that she doesn’t miss him, doesn’t miss sharing silence together in the evening before bed; both of them going through their nighttime routines in tandem. Huffily tries to convince herself that she doesn’t miss the surges of irritation that wash over her shoulders when Hux gets too uppity during tactical meetings, and _definitely_ doesn’t miss the way his hair sticks up in back when he’s had his cowl on for too long.

 

No, Rey of Jakku decidedly does _not_ miss Leia Organa’s wayward son.

 

(Except for the fact that she really, truly does).

 

Kylo Ren, Supreme Leader of the First Order, and champion of the Knights of Ren has never wanted to die more in his life. Which, really, he thinks to himself one (lonely) morning as he slowly dons the complicated layers of his uniform, is a pretty substantial statement. It’s just that this time, his desire to cease existence has nothing to do with the cacophony of voices in his head, but rather the lack of one very significant one.

 

It has been three days since he woke up with the taste of Rey’s skin in his mouth.

 

Three days of pacing, furious training, and a shorter fuse than even he is accustomed to. Three days of little sleep and even less peace, of anxiously glancing at the sterile wall of his ‘fresher while he shaves before bed, hoping to see her familiar mop of tousled brown hair beside him. It is undeniable now, how deeply he cares for her, and Kylo almost ( _but not quite_ ) wishes for the ignorance that had shielded him not even three days prior. He doesn’t know what he’ll do when ( _if_ ) the Force connects them again, and he _definitely_ doesn’t know what he’ll do if they meet in battle before that. But Kylo does know that he needs a plan, and that it needs to be one ending with Rey next to him.

 

As it turns out, he only has to wait two and a half more days before the Force announces her presence with its usual absence of sound and tsunami of emotion.

 

He’s on his back underneath the TIE Silencer, brow furrowed in concentration as he works, hex wrench in mouth when it happens. At first he doesn’t notice, just leans up enough to reach one arm up to the elbow in the ship’s underbelly and begins to tug on the offending piece of wiring (an irritating weapons system override that kept him from installing a more accurate, and less technologically flashy targeting program) too wrapped up in the task to catch the way the hangar's gone silent.

 

It isn’t until he emerges from beneath the ship that he sees her, hex wrench and wiring both clattering to the ground as he hastily stands.

 

“Rey,” he breathes, eyes wide at the sight of her, hunched over what he assumes to be a bench, face screwed up in either frustration or focus ( _or both_ ).

 

Her head snaps up, quickly followed by the rest of her, whatever project she’d been working on quickly forgotten. Rey mouths his name, and Kylo takes it as all the invitation he needs to close the space between them, stopping just short of touching her (his heart hammers so wildly in his chest he thinks maybe he’s about to pass out).

 

The dream lays between them, present in the way his fingertips ache to brush the long line of her collarbone, and the sudden dryness of her mouth as she stares at the obvious pulse in his throat. Ben ( _Kylo, he isn’t really sure who he is anymore, hasn’t been for a long time_ ) licks his lips, bends to pick up the wiring he’d dropped and holds it up as if in explanation.

 

“They installed this override on the weapons system that forced you to operate using only their inadequate, over engineered targeting program.” Rey reaches out trembling fingers to inspect the small bundle of insulated wires from his hand, and Ben’s whole body thrills. “It’s offensive, really”.

 

She looks up at him like he’s the only thing in the entire Galaxy, and Ben cannot stop himself from kissing her.

 

It’s soft, and lasts just long enough for Rey to brush the fingers of her free hand through the curls that hang against the nape of his neck. They pull apart reluctantly, only the steady pant of their breathing breaking the silence that sits between TIE Fighters. His hands belatedly find her hips, and he pulls her against his chest just in time to press a kiss into the crown of her head before the Force rises in a sharp crescendo and she is gone.

 

It’s not until well after he sits down, back against the central landing apparatus of his TIE Silencer, that Ben realizes she took his piece of wiring with her.

 

She sits with her knees pulled up to her chest one morning as he washes his hair, back turned to provide some semblance of modesty. He can feel her eyes on him like fire from where she sits, lower lip pulled tight between her teeth.

 

“You’re welcome to join me, you know.” He teases, the closest he’s come since the Throne Room to asking her to join his side. Rey laughs, a warm sound in his too-white ‘fresher, and Ben cannot help the smile he shoots over his shoulder.

 

His offer hangs in the air, and suddenly Ben is very aware of Rey’s eyes on his own.

 

They both know it, somewhere deep down, that their future does not begin with Rey clambering into a shuttle bound for the _Finalizer_.

 

Ben puts his head down and works; plan already formulating. The first time they see each other in person after Crait is in a First Order council room, ironically enough aboard his flagship dreadnaught. He sits at the head of the table, councilmen on either side, countenance relaxed as the Resistance’s negotiating party enters through the double doors. The small band of rebels is led by his mother: Poe Dameron to her left, and his desert girl to her right.

 

“Supreme Leader,” Leia Organa rasps, the barest hint of a smile playing across her thin lips; Ben has to tear his eyes away from Rey’s in order to answer.

 

“General Organa”.

 

The negotiations take days, neither party willing to break for fear of losing ground (or nerve). His mother is a brilliant politician, and Ben cannot help but sigh internally with relief at the thought of having her available to him as an advisor. The military aspects of their truce are squared away most quickly, cut and dry within just a few hours; it is the political negotiations that take the most time, Leia as assertive as ever in her bid to integrate her policies and stances into the First Order’s regime (Hux and the other councilmen bristle at this, and Ben knows he’s going to need a.. _turnover_ in staff almost immediately). There are certain things he and his mother agree on, that take merely a confirmation of belief before they are set aside in favor of more testy subjects: slavery is one of them (Ben agrees with his mother that the Stormtrooper program needs to be rehauled immediately), the necessity for regulations on planet wide destruction another (Ben’s ears still ring with the Hosnian system).

 

At the end of the first day, as the resistance party stands, ready to leave, Ben holds up one gloved hand.

 

“Rey of Jakku,” she swallows, eyes wide as every eye in her party turns to her.

 

“A word.”

 

He dismisses the rest of the room’s occupants, and tries not to dwell on the way his mother had smirked at him before leaving.

 

The second the doors swing shut Rey is in action, lean legs closing the minute distance between them as fast as she can. Ben catches her in his arms, presses kisses into every piece of her he can reach: the crown of her head, the space between her neck and shoulder, heart pounding wildly against his ribs. She pulls back, and just before he bends to kiss her she whispers his name, wonder in her teary eyes (his entire world comes crashing to a halt, arrested wholly by that one syllable).

 

Kissing in person, Ben decides, is _far_ preferable to kissing through their bond. He can feel every inch of her weight against his chest, can taste her on his tongue; and really, _truly_ fist his hands in the loose fabric at her back. He takes a step forward, until the back of her knees are brushing at the edge of the lacquered negotiating table, the perfect height for him to haul her up to sit upon it.

 

“Stay with me tonight,” he begs, lips moving against her own. Rey presses reverent kisses into the side of his neck, nimble fingers already unhooking eyelets to steal strokes of the skin beneath his high collar. Each member of the negotiating party has a room set aside for them on the upper level of the ship, sweeping suits designed for visiting dignitaries, each member save for her. From the second his mother agreed to this meeting, Ben has planned on Rey in his arms (he knows she can feel it across the bond, catches the sunny thrill of her own anticipation and excitement at the prospect).  

 

“Of course,” she replies, and he knows in the lowest part of his stomach that from the moment she’d stepped onto the _Finalizer_ she hadn’t even considered staying anywhere else.

 

Ben’s heart stutters poorly when Rey slides off the table, lips pulled into a sweet smile as she reaches up to fix his mussed collar. _Ready?_ She asks across the bond, palms resting on his chest only to tighten in response to a kiss against her forehead. _Of course_. In a gesture of old Alderaanian custom that his mother would be proud of, Ben offers her his arm and feels the whole world settle into orbit when she takes it.

 

The Force hums, alive and singing with the balance of the two of them; and Ben hopes, as he opens the door for her, that his parents can feel it too.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The look on Dameron’s face when they exit the council room arm in arm is worth more than all the credits in the Galaxy. Ben cannot help the cool smirk that spreads across his face at the sight, and he knows the possessive pride that flares across the bond is what causes Rey to steal a glance up at him, lips pulled up to one side in an exasperated little smile.

 

His mother’s face is a close second, thinning brows pulled up high to her hairline as she reads the nearly-dead language in the arrangement of Rey’s arm through his own. She’s the only person in the Galaxy left fluent in the custom of Alderaanian body language, a fact that hangs heavy in the air between them as the doors to the council room glide shut behind the flutter of his cloak, hand atop Rey’s in a way that would only be permitted by one betrothed to her on Alderaan.

 

It’s a quick, silent exchange that leaves Ben’s heart hammering somewhere in the vicinity of his throat, and Leia smiling softly when he raises the hand not twined with Rey’s to speak.

 

“We’ll continue tomorrow at 08:00 standard time,” his voice echoes against the polished durasteel walls, “General Hux will show you to your suits.”

 

Murmurs of distrust ripple through the small band of Resistance fighters, and more than one pair of eyes flash back over shoulders to study Rey as Hux leads them around the corner. Ben watches the small caravan go, doesn’t let the tension drain from his posture until they’re safely out of sight around the corner. Exhaling gustily, the Supreme Leader ducks his head just enough to brush a kiss against the crown of her head before almost whispering,

 

“Ready?” Rey thinks she’s never been more ready in her life.

 

Ben’s quarters are about what Rey had expected: sleek, well designed, nearly free of personal affects. There’s a tube of bacta on the nightstand, the same compression sleeves she’d seen him wear training beside it, the edge of a protein bar sticking out from beneath one sleeve. It’s apparent that his quarters serve as nothing more than a place to sleep and change from training gear into the heavy robes befitting of the Supreme Leader. Rey sets her lightstaff against the wall, and Ben follows suit, the hilt of his saber making a dull metallic noise when it met the durasteel.

 

There’s a beat, a moment of tension where they just stare at each other, painfully aware that this is the first time they’ve been in such close proximity outside of battle. Ben’s eyes are heavy on the bow of her lip, gaze nearly tangible when he traces it down her throat; she’s once again reminded of their dream, how he’d sucked his mark into the hollow just above her collarbones. Their bond sings with that image, and Ben swallows thickly, audible in the heavy silence of his room.

 

And then, not unlike the time they’d stood back to back in the throne room, they’re both moving. Rey’s hands find his skin first, calloused palms curling around his cheeks as she surges up onto her toes to kiss him. There’s an urgency born of too many Force bonds snapped shut unfairly soon, and too many nights alone in her AT-AT to the kiss, and Ben feels, rather than hears her snarl of frustration when he meets her lips slowly.

 

“We have until 08:00,” he purrs, hands ghosting down to begin removing the belt that cinches her tunic at the waist, “there’s no need to rush.” Rey feels her heart come crashing to a halt in her chest, and barely registers the sound of her belt hitting the floor for the heat in Ben’s stare. The rest of her clothes meet the same fate, stripped away slowly to pool at her feet as Ben laves kisses against every inch of her skin.

 

Rey’s breath hitches, falters unsteadily when his lips close around one pert nipple, mouth so much hotter than she’d ever imagined it. His hands are at her hips, black leather standing in stark contrast to her tanned skin and Ben nearly growls when she pushes an image of his gloved hand against her cunt across the bond. He rises to his full height, brings one gloved hand up to cup her chin, and presses a searing kiss against her lips before pulling back just enough to command,

 

“Get on the bed.”

 

She readily obeys, scrambling back until her shoulders lay perpendicular to the headboard, feet dangling over the edge as Ben drops to his knees between her legs. This is _so much better_ than any dream, Rey thinks hazily while he presses open mouthed kisses up one thigh, deft hands already propping her other leg over his shoulder. He reaches the skin where the tendon that connects her pelvis and leg jumps in stark relief, and places an achingly soft kiss there before pulling his eyes up to hers.

 

“May I?” Ben asks, echoing their dream, and the wicked grin that splits his face when she hastily nods her consent is all the evidence Rey needs to conclude it had been premeditated. He nips at her tendon, and quickly erases any sting when his mouth closes hotly over her clit. The leather that clings to his fingers does little to mask the heat of his hands where they hold her legs open, steady and strong as Rey desperately tries to close her thighs around his head.

 

Their bond is blown open more than it’s ever been before; to the point that Rey _feels_ him reach out and manipulate the force into holding her legs in place against the mattress so he can slide one gloved finger into her cunt. She keens, rocks her hips into the touch, and is rewarded with a long stroke of Ben’s tongue against her clit. _Good?_ He inquires over the bond, even as he adds another finger, pace torturously slow. Rey only pushes a garbled series of sensations back towards him, gasps when he returns the favor. She comes with his lips on her clit and the gloved hand not curled into her cunt closed over one breast.

 

Ben releases her legs and pulls away just far enough to wipe his mouth, lust crashing over her like the waves on Ahch-To’s shores as he joins her on the mattress. His lips are soft when they find hers in the half light, reverent when slim fingers trace the row of eyelets down his back.

 

“Take this off,” she whispers, and he is incapable of resisting.

 

Afterwards, Ben presses kisses like prayers across her skin, dark curls hiding his eyes from view as he maps out her body. He’s beautiful, striking with his head bowed and his fingers tangled in her own; like something out of a dream.

 

“I love you,” he murmurs against her sternum, and the Force practically _sings_. Rey gives a teary grin up at the ceiling, heart more full than she’s ever felt it before; and instead of stumbling over words she simply opens her mind (shows him how he’d looked to her that first night they’d connected after Crait, the way her lungs had felt like they were filled with engine coolant when he’d first kissed her, how she’d replayed the ghost of his fingers over hers again and again and _again_ ). The next-to-last Skywalker pulls her fully into his arms, cradles her head against his chest and dusts a crown of kisses around her head in response.

 

He pulls his mother aside after negotiations conclude the next day; mumbles his plan to marry her scavenger-turned-Jedi red faced. Leia just smiles, pats his hand lovingly, and quips,

 

“If you wait until negotiations have concluded, we can hold the ceremony in Varykino.”

 

The Force hums its content, and Ben releases a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding.

**Author's Note:**

> feel free to drop me prompts via my tumblr: _hyperphonic_  
> 


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